She was breathing regularly, but as people breathe while asleep.
"She sleeps,--she is able to sleep," thought Acte.

"She is a child yet." Still, after a while it came to her mind that that child chose to flee rather than remain the beloved of Vinicius; she preferred want to shame, wandering to a lordly house, to robes, jewels, and feasts, to the sound of lutes and citharas.
"Why ?" And she gazed at Lygia, as if to find an answer in her sleeping face.
She looked at her clear forehead, at the calm arch of her brows, at her dark tresses, at her parted lips, at her virgin bosom moved by calm breathing; then she thought again,--"How different from me!" Lygia seemed to her a miracle, a sort of divine vision, something beloved of the gods, a hundred times more beautiful than all the flowers in Caesar's garden, than all the statues in his palace.

But in the Greek woman's heart there was no envy.

On the contrary, at thought of the dangers which threatened the girl, great pity seized her.

A certain motherly feeling rose in the woman.